danielpearson-LMF

//Learning Motivation and Fun//


My 5 generalizations

 * 1) **Several reported that the charisma of the teacher had the most significant influence on their fun learning experience.** Sue credited her "eccentric" biology teacher who cheered, climbed on things, and got her students chanting for making her biology experience fun. Robert's teacher used hilarious facial expressions and had such great rapport with his students that he called many by nicknames. Both Sharon and Sam felt their philosophy professors are what made their classes fun. Sharon's treated students as equals, used friendly body language and created a positive environment. Sam's knew how to get you attention. For Anna, it was the teacher's movements, he was dynamic, and had a great rapport with his students. These were a great reminder to me, as a teacher, how I can create a fun environment.
 * 2) **Competitions or games were also mentioned several times as contributing to the fun learning experience.** In at least 9 of 26 videos, competition was a part of the fun learning experience. In some instances, competition seemed to be inherent in the activity. Whether it was Space Invader style typing games, Jeopardy, or competing in a Vocabulary Bee (like a Spelling Bee) several activities were by design competitions. Also, several learners described the competitive element as part of what made it fun. Jennifer described trying to understand what the lyrics were in songs sung in Spanish as "a fun, kind of competitive thing." Well, that is part of the reason I am enrolled in this class. I am hoping to explore how I can add competition and games into my teaching to make it more engaging.
 * 3) **Very few of the fun learning experiences were direct instruction or what I might call typical classroom work. Most were a unique one time experience that was added to a typical, I presume, non fun class.** 17 of 21 videos describing learning in a class with other teens described a unique experience that was added to the class and it was that experience that was fun. The other 4 seemed to describe the class as a whole as fun. For Torrey, it was a particular project designing a car that was "engaging, challenging, and fun." For John, it was playing a game on agriculture subsidies. For Joe a field trip to an ice rink. For Jess it was taking core samples of models of mountains. Maybe the prompt skewed the results this way, asking for them to describe a fun learning experience or maybe the uniqueness of the experience made it more memorable. For me, I will try to look for ways to include unique fun learning experiences in my teaching.
 * 4) **Several of the fun learning experiences involved the opportunity to learn with a group of friends.** When I consulted my notes to who and how many mentioned working in groups, I was shocked to see it was only 4 of 26. But what made me make this generalization was how they described working groups. For Torrey, it was "having fun with friends working together." For Robert it was "the fact that there were at least 10 people at the park helping with the music video made the day more fun overall." As a teacher, I am usually worried that when they work in groups, it becomes more about socializing and less about learning. Both examples mentioned though, the group work was outside of class. So as long as they are getting the project (and the learning done), the can spend as much time in their group (outside of class) as they want.
 * 5) **As a teacher, it may help to give control to the students (as far as pacing and content).** For this last generalization, I got to thinking about the groups and who was controlling the learning or activity. I decided to purely look at the statistics as reported on the submission form. Less than half of the videos I gathered data from reported that the teacher was in control 60% or more of the time. Less than 1/5th 80% or more of the time. Of course, looking at the data in this way is just telling me, that for these particular examples of "fun" learning activities, the teacher was not in control of pacing and content for the majority of the activities. It does not assess the quality of the learning. So, as I relinquish some control, make sure to still have clear learning goals or tasks the students must accomplish.

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